CHAPTER VI

LA SALLE ON THE GREAT LAKES

In the summer of 1679, La Salle returned from Fort Frontenac to Niagara to find the _Griffon_ finished and ready for her first voyage. By the completion of this vessel his enterprise was fairly launched. Behind him at Montreal were enemies and creditors; before him stretched the waters of the Great Lakes, and beyond was the unexplored wilderness. The men had been unable to sail the _Griffon_ up the Niagara River to the mouth of Lake Erie because of the strong adverse current. Now, with the help of a strong wind and with tow-ropes in the most difficult places, La Salle brought the vessel through the turbulent water to the calm outlet of the lake. There the crew celebrated their safe passage with religious services and cannonading and then set sail on the unknown waters.

To deter his men from the voyage, La Salle’s enemies had declared that the lake was full of rocks and sands. For the first day and night, therefore, the men kept their sounding-lines busy, but navigation proved to be easy. On the fourth day after leaving Niagara, they reached the mouth of that wide river called by the French “The Strait,”--Détroit. Here the current was so strong that they came to anchor to wait for a favorable breeze. Soon a brisk wind arose and the _Griffon_ ploughed her way through the rapids between Grosse Isle and the mainland, pioneer of the mighty vessels which to-day make that strait one of the great commercial highways of the world. On both sides stretched fine open fields dotted with fruit trees, and walnut and chestnut groves, and beyond in the distance were lofty forests. All were “so well-disposed,” says Hennepin, “that one would think Nature alone without the help of art could not have made so charming a prospect.” Flocks of turkeys and swans circled about, and from the deck of the ship herds of deer could be seen roaming the meadows. The _Griffon_ was soon well stocked with meat, and the returning hunters united in heaping praises on this beautiful spot where fruit and game of every kind abounded, and where even the bears were not so savage as in other places. Hennepin urged La Salle to make a settlement on this “charming strait,” but La Salle coldly reminded him of the great passion which he had professed a few months before for the discovery of a new country, and the priest was silenced. Amid the later hardships of the journey all must have looked longingly back to this time of ease and plenty at the strait of Detroit.

On the 12th of August, the _Griffon_ passed by the site of the present city of Detroit. Had they come here ten years before, the explorers would have found on the bank of the river a large stone, rudely fashioned in the likeness of a human figure and bedaubed with paint, which the Indians worshipped as a manito, or god. But in 1670 French priests, making the first recorded passage through the strait, had come upon this image, and “full of hatred for this false deity,” had fallen upon it with their axes, breaking it in pieces and casting it into the water. Beyond Detroit the river widened into a beautiful little sheet of water. As it was St. Claire’s day, Hennepin’s proposal that the name of the founder of his order be given to this lake was carried out, and it received its present name.

When the _Griffon_ had crossed the lake, the men saw before them wide marshes through which the swift-moving river had many a winding channel. They had come to the St. Clair Flats, a fan-shaped delta of seven channels, on which has been built to-day a popular summer resort. They set to work sounding one passage after another, only to find them shallow and almost barred with shoals. But at last they came upon an excellent channel about a league broad, with no sands and a depth everywhere of from three to eight fathoms of water through which the vessel sailed easily toward Lake Huron. At the mouth of the river, however, they were forced to drop anchor and remain for several days. A north wind had been blowing, driving the water of the three upper lakes into the strait. This had increased so much the usual force of the current that it was as violent as that of the Niagara, and entirely impassable for a vessel like the _Griffon_. Even when the wind turned southerly, La Salle could make no headway against this current until he sent ashore a dozen men who hauled and towed the vessel along the beach for half an hour, dragging her out of the narrow mouth of the channel into the wave-tossed waters of the lake. Once more all returned “thanks to the Almighty for their happy navigation,” and set sail on the 23rd of August on Lake Huron.

The favoring winds soon died down, and La Salle lay becalmed for two days among the islands of Thunder Bay. Starting from there at noon on his way northward, he was caught in a furious westerly gale. For hours the little vessel tossed and drifted over the raging waters of the lake, lying at the mercy of wind and wave. Even La Salle gave up hope and told his men to prepare for death. All fell on their knees except the pilot, who devoted the time instead to cursing and swearing against his employer for having brought him there to perish in a “nasty lake, and lose the glory he had acquired by long and happy navigations on the ocean.” But Pilot Lucas and his brave commander were not destined to perish in that storm. Hennepin vowed an altar to St. Anthony of Padua, prudently agreeing to set it up in Louisiana if they should reach there. The storm-clouds rolled away, the waters grew quiet, and the sun shone out on the wooded cliffs of the islands of Bois Blanc and Mackinac, and the dense forests of Michigan. The vessel anchored behind the point of St. Ignace, in the harbor of Michilimackinac, the settlement which was at once the centre of Jesuit missions and of Indian traders.

The sound of the _Griffon’s_ cannon brought out a varied throng from the wigwams and cabins on shore. Shouting Indians gazed with wonder at this huge wooden canoe; lawless French traders, swarthy from long years in the wilderness, to whom the distance of this trading post from civilization was its strongest recommendation, lounged idly out of their cabins, gazing with resentment at this invader of their trade and country; while black-robed Jesuit priests hurried to the shore to welcome the newcomers. Indians, traders, and Jesuits united in a show of welcome to La Salle as he landed, finely dressed and wearing a scarlet cloak bordered with broad gold lace. All marched to the little bark chapel in the Ottawa village, and united with the voyagers in hearing mass and giving thanks for their safe passage.

At this settlement La Salle found four of fifteen men whom he had sent ahead the autumn before to buy furs, and to go to the tribes along the Illinois River, making preparations for his coming. Most of these men had been enticed from his service, and had wasted the goods given them to exchange for furs, using them for their own personal gain. Troubled over his affairs in Canada La Salle had meant to return from this point to Montreal, leaving Tonty to conduct his party to the Illinois River. But he soon felt the hostile spirit at the trading post, and realized that his presence was necessary to keep his men from being drawn away. Even the swarms of Indians who hovered in their canoes about the vessel regarded it with wonder and jealousy rather than friendliness, and La Salle feared that the Illinois tribes would be tampered with by his enemies.

He determined to push on at once, and embarked early in September. The vessel proceeded across Lake Michigan, called by the French and Indians Lake Illinois from the name of the tribes who inhabited its southern shores, and cast anchor at the entrance of Green Bay. Here matters took a turn for the better. As the vessel lay tossing about behind a point of the bay, an Indian chief came out in his canoe to greet the Frenchmen. When he learned that La Salle was a friend of Count Frontenac and bore his commission, the Indian told him of his own warm friendship for Frontenac, for whom he would gladly lay down his life, and welcomed La Salle with the greatest cordiality. He reported, too, the presence of Frenchmen near by, and La Salle found the faithful remnant of his advance party waiting with a cargo of furs which they had collected. Eager to satisfy his clamorous creditors, he determined to send back the _Griffon_, in charge of the pilot and five men, with this load of furs. On the 18th of September, the _Griffon_ fired a parting shot and started for Niagara, to return as soon as she had discharged her cargo; and La Salle, with Hennepin and fourteen others, embarked in four canoes for the south.

The canoes had hardly started when a sudden September storm swept across the lake. The waves washed into the heavily laden canoes, darkness fell, and it was only by constant shouting that the men kept their boats together and got to shore. For four days the storm raged with unabated fury. As La Salle and his men waited from day to day in their cheerless encampment, living on pumpkins and Indian corn presented them by the friendly Indian chief and the meat of a single, porcupine brought in by a hunter, the thought of the _Griffon_ haunted them. Their worst fears proved afterward to have been fulfilled; she was never heard of again. With her sank the cargo which was to have restored La Salle’s credit in Montreal; and with her, too, perished the high hopes that had been set upon this first vessel on the upper lakes.

Although La Salle feared the worst, he did not turn back. As soon as the lake grew calm the four canoes set out again, coasting southward along the shore of Wisconsin. But the elements were against them. Storm after storm drove them ashore, where they spent wretched days and nights among the rocks and bushes, crouched around driftwood fires with nothing to shelter them from snow and rain but their blankets. As they went southward, steep, high bluffs ran so close to the lake that it was hard to find a landing-place. Yet the violence of the wind was so great that they were compelled at evening to drag their canoes to the top of the bluffs in order not to leave them exposed all night to the waves which would have dashed them to pieces. In the morning, in order to reëmbark, two men had to go into the water to the waist and hold a canoe upright until it was loaded, pushing it out or drawing it back as the waves advanced or retreated. Food gave out and the men paddled from morning till night with nothing to eat but a daily handful of Indian corn and hawthorn berries which they picked on shore and devoured so ravenously that they made them ill. Exhaustion and famine stared them in the face, but relief was in sight.

One morning as the men were paddling along near the site of Milwaukee, they saw upon the shore a cloud of ravens and eagles hovering over something. They hastened on land and found the body of a deer which had been killed by a wolf. This was the beginning of better things. As the little fleet advanced toward the south, they found the country ever fairer and the weather more temperate. There was an abundance of game, of which there had hitherto been an exceptional lack. They passed the Chicago River and circled the end of the lake, landing at the mouth of the St. Joseph. Here La Salle waited for Tonty to join them, employing the time in building a fort. On the third of December the party sailed up the river, bound for the villages of the Illinois. On a later trip in 1682 La Salle reached the Illinois settlements by a shorter route, crossing from his fort to the river Chicago, and journeying from its waters into a northern branch of the Illinois River.

In four months La Salle had traversed the length of Lake Erie, had passed through the strait of Detroit, up Lake Huron, through the Straits of Mackinac, and down Lake Michigan; from the sites of Buffalo and Cleveland he had sailed past Detroit and Milwaukee even to Chicago, and had then journeyed inland to the Illinois River. He had lost his vessel and her crew, as well as all his furs; he had met with hostility from French and Indian alike; he had been deserted by most of his advance party, and had held his own crew only by his presence and the dominating force of his personality; he had suffered endless hardships and privations: but nothing had shaken his purpose. In later years he followed the Illinois and the Mississippi to the Gulf of Mexico and led a colony to the limits of the present state of Texas, where he was murdered by one of his men. In history, La Salle stands out as a man whose courage and persevering fortitude in the face of almost insuperable obstacles mark him as one of the greatest explorers the world has ever known. We do well to join with Hennepin in saying, “Those who shall be so happy as to inhabit that noble country cannot but remember with gratitude those who discovered the way by venturing to sail upon unknown lakes.”